Synth Pop - Nik Kershaw

Another of the new wave of Synth pop musicians was Nik Kershaw. He held a record of 62 weeks in 1984 on the UK singles charts such was his popularity.

His career as many do started in a local band in the Ipswich area called Fusion but they split in 1982 and Nik decided to embark on a solo career and this decision would prove a lucrative one in terms of sales and popularity.

In 1984 he released his debut single 'Wouldn't it be good' and this peaked at number 4 in the UK charts singles. The video promo was in it's infancy stage and the video got a lot airing on MTV and this helped push the song in America.

On the back of that success he released his debut album 'Human Racing' which spawned a number of top selling singles. More success was to follow when he released his second studio album 'The Riddle' which again spawned a number of top 20 singles and he then concentrated on touring to display his material. At this time he had a new backing group to help him called the 'The Krew' who featured Mark Price who went on to drum for All About Eve and Del Amitiri.

In the summer of 1985 he also featured at Live Aid and played guitar on Elton Johns contribution 'nikita'. He went quiet for a while and it wasn't until late 1986 he released the acclaimed album 'Radio Muiscola' but unfortunately the sales did not reflect the music and when he released 'the works' in 1989 unfortunately the bubble had burst.

During the 1980s he released four albums with the debut 'human racing' reaching number 5, the follow up 'the riddle' reached number 8. In 1986 'Radio Musicola' peaked at 47 and 'The Works' did not even hit the top 100.

In terms of singles he released 13 of which 5 hit the top 10. The classic 'wouldn't it be good' reached 4 but his best selling was 'I won't let the sun go down on me' just failed to hit the top spot. Another close effort was 'the riddle' which stalled at number 3 and in 1985 he had 2 further top 10 with 'wide boy' and 'don quixote' which proved to be his last top 10 single.

However, in 1984 he had a 50 week existence in the charts which outstripped any solo artist that year. That wasn't the end of Nik and he went on to produce and write for others and penned huge hits for Chesney Hawkes and Let Loose in the early 1990s. His style of music was similar to Howard Jones and both made a huge contribution to popular music.

Further listening